Quick report
- Cracking
- isolated
The terrain traveled in today appeared stable and firm before the sun came out. With some warmth from the sun, E/SE slopes were warming on the surface, but this did not lead to any increased reactivity. We experienced isolated cracking in more sheltered areas, namely in the trees of Main Gully. In Tucks, I noticed cracking under my skis at the floor of the ravine, but nothing on the slopes above. Stability tests showed no instabilities where I dug (CTX, ECTN17-20 (BRK)). When prying out columns, I did note that there was a weaker interface between the top 10cm of the thick crust (P) and the bottom 15cm (K) on a thin layer of weak snow sandwiched between. Nothing occurred when isolating this layer with a propagation saw test (PSTX) Overall, the main concern for travel today was good snow sliding off an icy bed surface and skis/boards sliding out on that. Any reactivity observed was isolated and did not show propagation potential.
Weather
- Air Temp
- 30
- Cloud Cover
- few
- Wind Loading
- none
- Recent Snowfall
- 0
- Snow Avail For Transport
- small smounts
Mostly Clear skies and warm sun with temperatures hovering around freezing. An inversion around 4000' allowed for ravines to soak up the sun.
Snowpack
The total snow depth at my dig site was 235cm. I found 5cm of light snow (4F) on top of a 10cm (P) crust. A 3cm layer of softer grains (4F) separated this from a thicker (25cm) knife crust underneath. This proved to be the weakest interface, but still stubborn. The rest of the snowpack was fairly consolidated, mostly 1F-1F+ down to 120cm, with a 5cm layer of graupel from 160-165cm.